Thoughts on accountability and what Freeze had to say

Some Twitter folks expressed concern yesterday with Hugh Freeze talking about players and not accepting responsibility for his role in the loss at Florida.

I have always been and remain in favor of shared responsibility between players and coaches.

Ultimately, someone has to be responsible for the final outcome, and that’s the guy making $4.3 million a year.

But I know this.

When I was 19-22 years old I knew the difference in right and wrong. I knew how to follow instructions in a classroom or at a job.

Our military begins training 18-year-olds to protect our country. There’s some accountability going on there, and it’s OK for college football players to be accountable too.

In today’s culture there’s no good way for coaches to try and hold players accountable in a public setting. There will always be backlash.

I think coaches are OK until they start naming names. It’s OK to talk about assignment busts and poor execution in terms of trying to explain what happened in a loss, because everyone wants an explanation.

It’s not OK to name the names. If fans are that interested they can DVR the game and break it down.

Most of the athletes I come in contact with are eager to accept responsibility. Some are not, and that squares with society. Everybody’s not locked in, focused and doing the right thing all the time.

Here’s what Freeze said his Monday presser. Regarding the red zone, he talks about play-calling as well as execution.

(This was a part of the opening statement)

“We certainly did not play our best. Some of that had to do with them, some of that had to do with us not making plays or not coaching them to play well enough.

(In response to a question on Tony Conner’s rehab and soft pass coverage by the defense)

“Everything looks good, but he’s going to rehab, and that starts in the middle of this week, I believe. We do miss him. The softer coverages, some of it is bad planning and not our awareness of where the sticks are when we run zone coverage. Some of it is blown assignments. It’s a combination that we are all responsible for. It’s really not part of any certain person.”

(In response to a red zone question)

“I would love to show you the tape. We only got down there one time, and we should have scored. I wouldn’t have called anything differently. And I said last week from the Vandy game we made two bad calls, schematically. The two we made the other night, both should have scored if we executed. We had a guy whiff on both plays. We knew what they were going to be in. Sometimes you physically get beat one on one, sometimes you make a bad call, and sometimes you make a mental mistake. Those are the toughest ones to deal with. One of them was a mistake, the other was he lost a one-on-one. One was a bad call. The first option on the toss, they had two guys outside. That was a bad call. We just need to continue to work and be true to who we are. We’ve tried under center, and we’ve tried almost everything. We need to make sure the plays we call are sound, and we probably need to get Chad (Kelly) the ability to throw more one-on-one balls.”

Hey PA,
Any word on the Tee Shepard situation? Lots of talk that he is wanting to leave Ole Miss. Seems like HF dedicated a bit of time talking about him this week.. (maybe it’s b/c a question was asked).

TheGiantRebel

oops sorry just ready some of the comments for today and you already addressed this!